


bent right to your wind

by pega



Category: Gilmore Girls
Genre: (Set early/mid-Season 5), A Year In The Life made me mad so I wrote this, Asher Flemming is dead, Canon diversion, F/F, I'm not going to call this a slow burn but it's pre-slash for a LONG time, Paris is pregnant, Rory and Paris get a clue, Unplanned Pregnancy, at least, proportional to the fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-16
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-17 20:21:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29477631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pega/pseuds/pega
Summary: Paris is in the process of grieving Asher when she realizes she's pregnant. She consults with the only person she knows with any experience with teen pregnancy. Rory has always had a way of turning Paris's plans upside down, and her unexpected reaction changes things for both of them.
Relationships: Paris Geller/Rory Gilmore
Comments: 9
Kudos: 77





	bent right to your wind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dollsome](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dollsome/gifts).



Paris experiences panic regularly. It’s not a big deal, and she mainly considers it an inevitable consequence of living in a patriarchal society as an intelligent woman - she occasionally ties herself into knots internally over stupid things, and that has to be okay, because every biography of every woman she’s ever admired says that it’s okay, and normal. So it is. 

This type of panic is different, like the difference between the ache of a bruise and the queasiness of hearing a bone snap. This isn’t a stupid thing that she’s beating herself up over for no good reason. This is actually a problem, actually something she needs to figure out and fix and fast. Except -

She has no idea where to start, because all she feels right now is sick to her stomach.

At least now she knows why she’s been barfing every morning.

The cliche double pink lines are there. Paris is nineteen. Teen pregnancy. It’s a technicality, she tries to assure herself - because she will turn twenty in December, and right now it’s September, so there’s no way... anything... will happen while she’s still nineteen, but what does it mean that she just said “anything”, because she can’t - she can’t seriously be considering...

Paris doesn’t know what she’s considering. Asher is dead. She’s a sophomore at Yale, and she was sleeping with a professor, and then he died, and now she’s pregnant with a dead man’s child. 

Rory finally answers her phone on the fifth ring. “Paris, hey. Is everything-” Of course Rory’s voice is gentle, because Asher is dead, but the piece of Paris that’s melting is certain that Rory knows already. Because Rory seems to know everything about her, all the time, all of Paris’s fears and doubts, and that’s why Paris is calling her, because if anyone will understand what it means for things to be not okay, it will be Rory.

Paris realizes Rory asked her a question. “No.” 

There’s silence on the other end, and it takes Paris a minute to figure out that Rory is waiting for Paris to spew paragraphs into the air about anything and everything that’s bothering her, because that’s what she would normally do. 

“Okay, shit.” Rory usually doesn’t swear, but Paris doesn’t usually give one word answers. “Where are you?”

“The dorm,” is all Paris can offer back.

Rory exhales, and Paris doesn’t understand why that small answer gave Rory any relief, but she’s glad it did. “I’ll be there in thirty minutes. Want me to be on the phone while I drive?” 

“Absolutely not, focus on driving. I’ll-” Paris takes a deep breath in, and it’s almost like she and Rory are sharing lungs right now, even though Rory doesn’t know what’s wrong yet. “-I’ll be here.” 

“Gotcha. Be there in thirty.”

Rory, like always, is true to her word. Her hair is windswept, and Paris vaguely wonders if she ran the distance from the parking lot to their door. She also wonders what she looks like to Rory, if her devastation is visible on her face, or at least if her eyes look as puffy as they feel.

“Paris, hey-” Rory stops in her tracks, nose scrunched, like she’s staring at some puzzle. “What’s going on?”

She doesn’t know where to start. 

“Are you-” she tries to begin, but she cuts herself off, because even Paris Geller knows that it’s not nice to ask somebody if they’re glad they were born. “Could I-,” she tries again, and this time a more appropriate ending comes out of her mouth, “Could I ask you about, you know, growing up?”

Rory slows down, her arms coming to fall at her sides. “What do you mean?”

Paris huffs, because Rory is smarter than this, but usually Paris is more direct than this, so maybe it’s fair enough. “With your mom, I mean. What was it like?”

Rory lowers herself down onto the couch, and the movement is painful to witness, because Rory at her most distracted is more graceful than Paris on her best day. “I mean, when I was really young, I don’t remember those parts. I remember the shed, a little. And the swans.”

“The shed?” Paris’s stomach does another turn. Anything called The Shed calls to mind grimness and dankness and dirt and-

Rory smiles. “It was more like a pool house, really. My mother worked as a maid at the inn, and they rented the shed to us, but it was bright and cozy, and later on we moved into an apartment in town.” 

Oh. “That sounds kind of nice.” 

“Yeah,” Rory nods. “And you’ve met my mom. She’s my best friend, except for you and Lane, but also not really, no offence. She’d probably still win if the four of us were on a lifeboat.”

“Was that because she was young?” Paris wants to swallow the question back up, but she does need to know. Her parents weren’t young. She was born as the culmination of a fifteen year timeline. 

“Maybe,” is all Rory offers, until Paris makes a face that must communicate something, and then Rory laughs a little. “I think I would have loved her regardless. She’s also pretty childlike now, so I don’t think age mattered too much. But I guess us being alone helped, in a way. We had to build a life together.”

It’s the fatalism, Paris decides. It’s the fatalism that’s different from how her parents were, how she was raised. Everything is under control - that’s the lesson she got from tutors and timelines and lessons in etiquette. So, anything that you dislike, you fix. You don’t live with it, and you certainly don’t learn to love it. 

Maybe the emphasis on control is why she feels so tight all the time. 

“Paris,” Rory begins, eyes wide as ever. “Are you pregnant?”

She can only nod. 

“Oh,” Rory breathes, an unknown mirror to Paris an hour before. “Asher?”

Paris nods again. 

Rory repositions herself on the sofa, pushes herself close enough so Paris can fall against her shoulder. “Well then.” 

She’s too tired then, in that moment, to ask Rory what the hell “well then” is supposed to mean. She just closes her eyes, and for once, she doesn’t lie to herself that it will only be a minute. Paris knows she’ll need Rory’s shoulder for more than that. This tiredness is deeper than anything she’s ever felt. 

~~~

When she comes to, it’s late evening, and the last beams of summer sunlight are pulsing through the windows. Rory is gone, and for a moment, Paris feels the panic swell up again, until she spots her in their kitchen, ladelling entirely too much sauce onto entirely too much pasta. When in doubt, carbo-load, that’s the Gilmore motto, and she feels an anticipatory settling in her stomach at the thought of a little more Rory time. 

“You’re awake!” Rory cheerfully sings out. 

Paris isn’t feeling cheerful, but she’s willing to try for neutral. “Yeah.”

“Pasta’s ready, if you want to eat.”

She shuffles to their makeshift table. It’s hard to be dignified in sock feet and sweatpants. “Hillary Clinton would be so disappointed in me.”

“No she wouldn’t be,” Rory counters without turning. “Hillary Clinton would love your ability to speak your mind, and she wouldn’t give a crap about who you had sex with.”

Paris groans. “You really hated him, didn’t you?”

For that, Rory does turn, although she finishes making them two excessive plates. She studies Paris before answering. 

“I didn’t hate him, but he did make me worried for you. It’s a cliche, and he should have known better. I’m sad that he died.” Rory blinks. “Is that enough?” 

Paris knows what she’s asking. “Yes.”

“Good.” Rory smiles. “Now eat.”

“What am I going to do next?” The question slips out of Paris’s mouth. Rory pointedly loads up her own fork and gestures at Paris. Paris does the same, and then puts actual human food into her mouth, because fine, and finally Rory answers, looking pleased as Paris ruins any attempt at eating spaghetti with dignity. 

“It’s up to you. Do you want to talk to my mom?” 

Paris nods, mouth full. 

“She’s coming over tonight, so I’m glad you said yes.”

All she can do is glare.

When Lorelai arrives, it’s clear she’s already been told everything, because she hugs Paris for forty-five straight seconds. Paris lets her, because needing deep touch during traumatic events is normal, and she won’t get a hug like this from her mom.

Lorelai listens as Paris spills the entire story of how she met Asher and how much she loved him and how much his kids hate her now because she’s the one who got him cremated in a decent crematorium and she didn’t let them ramsack his house and then she threw up in the bathroom and took a test. 

“And don’t ask me what I’m going to do, because that question is moronic and vague, and I’m not going to dance around the issue, because the question is simple: abortion, adoption, or raising an actual human child.” 

Lorelai blinked. “Honey, you think I was going to ask you ‘what are you going to do’? I hated that too.” 

“Oh.” Right. “Thanks.”

“You’re right, there’s those three choices. And your window for abortion will close in a month or two, but you can keep thinking until then.”

It helps to hear it spelled out. “Right.” The urgency seeps out of Paris’s body. 

“And look - you like school, right? Yale, I mean?”

Paris shoots Lorelai a look. 

“So, no matter what, you’re staying here. You’re finishing your degree. Unless financially your parents would, you know?”

She shakes her head. “Asher left me enough in the will to pay for Yale, and my trust fund is already signed over. I have enough, even, for medical school, if I wanted.” 

“So money’s not a problem.” Lorelai stretches her arms up over her head, making her age inappropriate shirt ride up to reveal her midriff. “That leaves us two other things - how you feel about it, and how other people feel about it.”

Unthinking, Paris turns to Rory, with a question in her eyes. 

“What? Me? Paris, I think you should do whatever you want. Obviously.”

“Bullshit, like you’d still be my roommate if there was an infant here.”

Rory doesn’t waver. “Yes, because you’re a crazy person who would track me down and move in no matter where I went. And because I’m a crazy person who would be glad about it! You’re not getting rid of me, not even with a baby.”

Lorelai gives her daughter an odd look, but Paris doesn’t have the space to process it, because now she’s fucking crying, and oh god, is this what the hormones are going to be like?

“Let’s end that sesh here now, girls. Quit while we’re ahead. Paris, get your butt into some pajamas. Rory, can you walk me to my car?”

Rory grumbles but follows her mother to the door, and Paris, for once, doesn’t grumble, but she also doesn’t put on pajamas, and instead she collapses into bed, pushing all thoughts of the future as far away as possible.

She’s halfway asleep when her door creaks open. Rory stands in the frame, silhouetted by the hallway light, and Paris groggily thinks that this is why she hated Rory, because she doesn’t look bad in any lighting, and in fact, looks like an angel under circumstances when someone else would look creepy.

“Paris, you awake?” Her voice lilts, and it’s really fucking unfair that Rory can sound like that, and look like that, and have a brain in her head that frankly rivals her own.

“I am now.” 

Without another word, Rory crosses the room and slides into bed with Paris. “You didn’t put on pajamas,” she scolds, halfheartedly. 

“It’s eight pm.”

“I know.” Rory puts her arm around Paris’s midsection, which is more loaded now than it would have been before. “I meant it.”

Paris isn’t stupid, so she doesn’t ask what Rory’s referring to. “You sure?”

“Yep.” 

Paris thinks that will be all, and she tries to focus on evening her breathing so she can sleep and wake up and have it be a different day, but after several heartbeats, Rory speaks again.

“I mean, it’s because it’s you. But also because if you do, you know, do the thing, it would be me. Little me, I mean. Am I making any sense?”

“Barely,” Paris answers, because Rory Gilmore is smart enough to not talk like a god-damn valley girl when faced with an emotional conversation. “But yes.”

“Good.” 

Paris expects Rory to leave then, despite this conversation, because while they do... do this sometimes, cuddle or whatever the hell fluffy bunny word you want to apply to the situation, she never stays the night, because that probably edges on some line of propriety that Rory was born knowing and that Paris was never taught.

She doesn’t though, and she’s still there when Paris wakes up the next morning. And it’s an old wound, but something in Paris is soothed when she sees that Rory does in fact get bedhead and bad breath in the morning. Like maybe the world isn’t out to get her, and maybe there’s a path through this that will lead to some happiness. 

And with that uncharacteristic thought, she decides to steal all the hot water before Rory gets vertical.

~~~

Paris notices, around the time that she starts needing to wear skirts with elastic waistbands instead of sensible slacks, that Rory hasn’t had Farm Boy over for a midnight rendezvous in a while. She’s self-aware enough to consider that it may be her, because now their fridge is stuffed with leafy greens and other things with real nutrients, and there are baby books on every night stand, and she has been lucky enough to get the type of pregnancy hormones that make her rage, and maybe that’s a turn-off for Farm Boy because men are weak, but then again, Rory doesn’t seem to be leaving the apartment any more often than she needs to for class, so she’s probably not sneaking away to meet him in hicksville or anything like that. So it can’t be her, Rory’s nightmare pregnant roommate, that’s keeping Dean (fine, she knows his name, she’d admit it under oath but not to Rory) away. 

She thinks about asking Rory, but honestly, she’s got her hands full trying to take enough units this fall so she can go lighter in the spring. If she can take Constitutional Law, Organic Chemistry 1, Organic Chemistry 2, Latin IV, Human Biology, Cell Biology, and the stupid mandatory English class on British Literature of the 19th Century, she’ll be able to relax in the spring with just four classes, all political science electives, and she could do those in her sleep. She’ll probably need to do some of them in her sleep. She called her mother under the guise of doing a class project on childhood development and confirmed that Geller women are prone to absolutely awful last trimester pregnancies, with insomnia and night terrors and the works. 

Sometimes, she hates her genes, but these days she’s trying not to think like that, because a parent’s inner voice becomes the child’s inner voice, and she doesn’t want her and Asher’s child to ever feel like she does. 

The baby (and she has started thinking of “it” as the baby, because Paris Geller is not afraid of her own decision making process, no ma’am, she has decided that this fetus will become a baby and so a baby is what she’s calling it) is due in early May, right before finals. She’s planning on telling the college exactly never, but Rory has been pushing for them to move from on-campus to off-campus because apparently “there are rules”, even though those rules only specify “no pets”, not “no children”. But Paris is still feeling teary eyed about Rory sticking with her, and she’s willing to tour the off-campus apartments as long as she’s also allowed to grill the property managers about local crime rates.

However, the apartments Rory keeps making her visit are all two bedrooms. Paris thought for a moment that it was a hint, and she tried to act cheerful and told Rory that they would be perfect for her and the baby, but Rory just rolled her eyes and said that Paris needed to trust the process more. And that Rory could just as easily share with Paris, and this way, the baby could have their own room, which would be necessary given how much baby stuff Paris is buying, but Paris’s mind got stuck on the thought of her and Rory sharing and just shorted out and she missed the last parts.

Because, the thing is, Paris thought that Rory hated sharing a room with her. Because Paris wakes up grumpy, because Paris is bad at boundaries, because Paris is just “so Paris”, and she knows she’s not a good adjective. 

But now, somehow, Rory wants to share again, and it does make it easier to find a place within walking distance from their classes, but Paris just. Paris doesn’t understand. Because if Paris and Rory share a room again, then Rory will really never be able to bring Farm Boy back to their apartment. Or Logan, or the James Dean knockoff, or whoever else falls for Rory Gilmore whenever she blinks her Bambi eyes. 

She decides to confront Rory, because she’s Paris fucking Geller, and she is not afraid of a little brutal honesty. 

Well, she’s a little afraid of Rory fucking Gilmore being the subject of that honesty, but whatever. 

She waits until it’s dinner time, because the roommates do that now, eat dinner together like it’s Leave it to Beaver, and she asks, as casually as she can, “Is Farm Boy still in the picture?”

Rory’s nose scrunches. “I know you know his name is Dean.”

Paris just waits.

“No, I’m - I told Dean we needed to cool it. He didn’t love it, so I told him we needed to ice it. Happy?”

She is, but she doesn’t say that, obviously. “Okay. Are you dating the bartender?”

“Again, you know his name. But no, Paris, I’m not dating him or anyone, I’m a little busy right now.” Rory’s voice is sharper than usual, and it stabs Paris in the gut. 

“Well, excuse me, I didn’t mean to be such a burden on your love life!” She hates when she’s like this, she does, but -

Rory’s eyes flash. “Paris. It’s not about you. I just am not in the mood for men right now.”

And well. That stabs Paris somewhere else, but she ignores it, because she knows that Rory didn’t mean it that way. “Because of my pregnancy varicose veins?” And Paris didn’t mean for that to be funny, her veins are disgusting and should be used in birth control ads, but Rory starts laughing high and breathily and suddenly all the clouds in the room dissipate. 

~~~

It takes until the first day of spring semester for the idiots she goes to school with to notice that she’s pregnant. There may have been whispers before, she concedes, but people weren’t stopping in the halls to gape. 

Paris and Rory moved over winter break, because the campus was empty and Paris didn’t want to go home and Rory’s mother was off doing something wild like following a band on tour with the coffee shop guy. So now she takes the number 829 bus to campus, because actually her ankles are swollen to the size of saucers, and by the time she gets to her seminar on Monday morning, she’s already not in the mood for questions.

“Woah, Paris, um-”

“Is she?”

“What the fuck.”

“Do you think she did it on purpose? Like in protest?”

The worst part is that the questions, most of the time, aren’t even directed at her. She’s become an object, a case study, and they’re all children but they shouldn’t be, because this is fucking Yale. 

She checks her watch before she makes a scene, because honestly, she’s still a little worried that someone is going to tell the dean of students that Professor Flemming got a student pregnant, and she doesn’t want his legacy tarnished by pettiness. 

There’s four minutes before class begins, and Professor Jordan is infamous for starting class late. 

“Hey, Neanderthals.” Pregnant women probably shouldn’t stand on chairs, but Paris is okay risking it to make a point. “If you have a moronic question, ask. Or better yet, let me preempt you! Due date is in May, you will NEVER get to know where the other half of the genes come from, and I AM graduating on time, because it’s the goddamn twenty-first century, and women can do it all, especially me. Anyone object to my personal choices?”

Heads shake. 

“Good. Now shut the fuck up and let’s attempt to actually learn something.”

Ultimately, Yale is a small campus. Paris’s proclamation spreads, and by noon, no one is making eye contact with her. Which is good. Probably. 

It is a little lonely.

Even Rory hears, because when Paris trudges back to their apartment at 8:30pm, she’s there, waiting, with takeout. 

Paris should probably watch her MSG. 

But it will be fine for one night. And Rory’s smile when she collapses onto the couch without another word is more than enough to make up for the absolutely crap-tastic day.

~~~

Sharing a bedroom with Rory is different than Paris thought it would be. 

Mainly, she thought they’d get twin beds, but then Rory kept steering them towards the king beds at Ikea, and well. Somehow they decided it would make more sense to share. There’s more space by volume, although Paris did the math and there’s still less width per person, but there is a benefit to sharing in terms of sleep quality, something about body heat. And only one set of blankets and pillows and such. 

It’s probably because ever since Paris found out she was pregnant, Rory would periodically need to cuddle her to calm her down from panic about being pregnant. The larger bed helps make this process more efficient, and Rory doesn’t fall out of bed anymore. 

It does mean they wind up tangled together almost every night now, instead of just sometimes. 

Usually, this happens while Paris is asleep and has plausible deniability, but some nights, she lies awake, trying to rationalize why she’s not moving away. 

Her pregnant belly is large now, large enough that she has to sleep on her side with supporting pillows. Rory has somehow wound up curled around the belly like a comma, and emotions Paris doesn’t know how to name are making her ache. 

She’s not sure if she could have done this without Rory. And that scares her, because she’s Paris Geller, and she can do anything as an independent woman. 

Maybe she doesn’t have to, whispers a part of her. 

That part sounds a lot like Rory.

So she tries to listen.

~~~

Paris feels the first contraction while she’s taking the final exam for American Progressivism and Its Critics. She has two pages to go on her essay, so she ignores the contractions but still keeps time with her watch. They’re more than ten minutes apart, so she thinks she’s fine, and then she stands up to turn her exam in and her chair is wet, and that mortifies her more than she thought it would.

“Um,” she stammers, handinding her blue book to “Just Call Me Anna” Westwood. “Professor, I-”

“Just call me Anna, Paris,” Westwood insists, because she’s a goddamn hippie.

“Anna, I’m obviously pregnant, and my water just broke, and ordinarily I’d stay behind to help with cleaning my seat, but I have a limited window before I actually begin delivery so you may want to call a janitor.” 

Westwood blinks, and Paris doesn’t wait for a response, she just hightails it out of there and presses the number for Rory’s speed-dial. (It’s number 1, because when she told her parents she wasn’t coming home unless they were willing to accept their out-of-wedlock grandchildren, she freed up the two spaces in her speed-dial that were keeping Rory at number 3.)

“Paris!” Rory’s voice is a sharp whisper. “Are you okay?”

“Yes, but I’m in labor. I have a taxi to get me to the hospital, finish your Calc final and then come find me, okay?”

“Paris, I’m not finishing my final while you’re in labor!”

Paris rolls her eyes. “It’s going to be a minute, kid, Geller women have long labors.”

“Excuse me, Professor Harding - Paris, I’ll meet you at the hospital in ten minutes.” Rory hangs up before Paris can argue. 

Stupid. This is why Rory always has terrible boyfriends. She has no self of professional self-preservation.

Paris does feel a little better about the pounding pain knowing that Rory is on her way.

Rory actually beats Paris to the hospital, and she’s waiting with her bookbag in the lobby when the taxi driver reluctantly wheels Paris in on a wheelchair. Rory almost shoves the man out of the way. “Paris!”

“Rory, I hope you didn’t speed, because statistically that’s way more dangerous than-”

“-Paris, we need to get you checked in!” Rory manhandles her to the nearest nurse. “My friend is in labor!”

The nurse is relatively unimpressed, but does usher them both back into an elevator that takes them to the labor and delivery floor. 

“My bag, my go-bag-” Paris tries. 

“I’ll get my mom on it. Just focus on the pushing! Or the not pushing, if it isn’t time yet.” Rory’s high cheeks are splotched with red. Paris feels a little loopy from the adrenaline so she doesn’t comment. 

Or at least, she tries not to comment, but she’s in god-damn labor so she’ll steer the conversation wherever she wants. “It’s funny that you’re more panicked than me. You’re overreacting. It’s going to be a while.”

Rory glares. “Paris, you refused to use shampoo with sulfates in your last trimester, you do not get to say I’m overreacting. Jesus.” She runs her hand through her dark hair. “Is it like, this hard for you to believe I care about you?”

Paris can feel her heart skip a beat. “Yes.”

“Well then, get used to it!” Rory turns to the attending nurse, who is looking very bemused. “Can we get her hooked up to like, an IV and get her someone to check on her?”

“Just waiting for you to let me transfer her,” the nurse drolls back. “I need access to her chair to get her into the bed.”

“Oh.” 

Rory is quiet until Paris winces at the IV insertion. “Paris, you okay? Is it in right? Do you need anything? Are you in a lot of pain?”

“Rory. Can you do me a favor and see when your mom is getting here with the go-bag? It has my books.” Paris doesn’t really need the books now, because actually, the contractions are coming faster than she thought they would, and the pain is distracting, but she needs to think about this whole ‘Rory caring for her’ thing and she can’t do it if Rory’s face is near her face. 

“Got it!” Rory dashes out of the hospital room, and Paris thinks that both she and the nurse give twin sighs of relief. Then the contractions begin again, and Paris has to bite back the desire to curse the memory of a very sweet, very dead old man.

Rory returns and somehow winds up holding her hand. It’s nice, Paris thinks, somewhat delirious. Rory’s hand is soft and her nails aren’t polished, just raw, and she thinks she can tell where Rory picks at her cuticles. They’re human hands, and it helps, a lot, to have her there.

The baby comes much faster than Paris expected. Less than two hours from her arrival, she’s staring at an alive, squirmy grimmy boy.

A boy.

All of her baby names were for girls, because honestly, she just expected it to go that way. Maybe because Lorelai had a girl, maybe because Paris really only ever notices the existence of girls, but it’s very obvious that her son (she has a son!) needs a name other than Ada (as in Lovelace, obviously). 

Rory is cooing, because of course Rory coos at babies. But Rory has a right to coo at this baby, doesn’t she? Because he’s coming home with both of them, to the apartment where she and Paris share a room, and it’s a 48 month lease, so they’re going to be an actual unit for at least another two years. So really, he’s their baby.

That particular thought makes a few things clear to Paris.

First, in some ways, she’s glad everything has worked out like this. She’ll never be happy that Asher Flemming died, but - but this isn’t awful. If he had been alive, he would have hated her being pregnant. He already had kids, and the scandal of the professor and the student would have been monstrous. The baby, this baby, her baby, would have represented that to him, and she knows in that moment that they couldn’t have stayed together, not like this.

Second, she’s in love with Rory Gilmore, and probably has been for upwards of five years. 

Third, she’s Paris Geller, and if she’s in love with Rory Gilmore, Rory Gilmore is certainly in love with her, because Rory has been putting up with her for UPWARDS OF FIVE YEARS. Rory has stayed with Paris through heartbreak and pregnancy and Paris at her worst. Rory has signed a lease with Paris, a long lease, and she did that knowing there would be a baby coming. There hasn’t been a boy sniffing around for almost nine months now. 

Fourth, it’s obvious what she’s going to name her son.

“Put Rory Geller on the birth certificate,” she announces to the room, and Rory goes still next to her.

“Paris, are you sure?” is what Rory asks, and that’s enough to make Paris know she’s right.

Paris looks at Rory, her Rory. “Don’t let me make you feel trapped.” Because that’s her only fear now, is that she’ll push Rory into a life she doesn’t want to lead. She fumbles for Rory’s hand, because hers feels empty without it now. 

Rory grins, and it’s not a Disney Princess smile at all. It’s toothy and large and for once, Paris feels like she understands everything going on in Rory’s perfect little head. “I was waiting for you to catch on.”

“You could have given me a hint.”

Rory snorts. “Paris, we sleep in the same bed. I thought that would do it.”

Right. “It’ll be hard, having a newborn.”

“Paris, when has anything involving us ever been easy?” Rory is still grinning, so Paris pulls her down for a kiss, and yeah. Who would want things to be easy, when the hard things are so wonderful?


End file.
